“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

Flannery O’Connor

Welcome

My name is Francie Arenson Dickman and I’m a writer. At first, I wrote in journals to entertain myself. Then I wrote letters to friends, old-fashioned pen and paper letters, to entertain them. Now I write essays and novels to entertain you. Spend a few minutes in my world and maybe you’ll forget about your own…or even better, maybe my world will remind you of your own, and you’ll relate. No matter what, I hope you laugh.

Recent Publications

Writing My College Essay, Thirty Years Later

“As if, at 17, kids can know who they are. Or what they’ll be. Or why they want to go to college, let alone a certain college, beyond the legit reasons that they can’t articulate as part of the “Why” essay, like: I visited and had a great time or my parents went there or they have a great football team.

As if the line from where one goes to college to where she hopes to end up is a guaranteed trajectory. As if our 17-year-old selves could have imagined that one day, on the doorstep of fifty, the line between living the dream and just living would become so fine.”[read article in Motherwell Magazine]

Latest on the Blog

“You didn’t call.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt bad, like I was talking to a boy in high school rather than the owner
of my daughters’ overnight camp. We were standing at the buses. I’d walked over to Gabe to say hello, as I always do. But unlike the previous five years, our arrival this year[read]